Thursday, March 4, 2010

For anyone interested in reading the 10 Page PDF Declaration of Jason Masherah who is the Director of Sports Brands at The Upper Deck - You can do so here.

Some interesting excerpts:

14. Upper Deck would also face severe monetary fines and penalties from Wal-Mart and Target if Upper Deck's products are not available for sale on the promised dates, bringing more immediate financial hardship.

23. (in part)...Throughout history, and long before MLBP started leveraging trading card companies into licensing deals, baseball cards have borne players in uniform. In the modern market, there is no such thing as a baseball player series that does not feature photos of players in their uniforms. A series consisting solely of players not in uniforms would be, at best, a sporadic novelty low-revenue item. This is about Upper Deck's ability to continue to produce player-licensed baseball cards and to compete fairly in the market for such cards against MLBP-licensed cards. If we cannot use the uniforms, we cannot compete and most assuredly there will be only one baseball trading card company — Topps — when the dust settles.

24. MLBP has engaged in pattern of using legal actions to push non-licensees out of the baseball trading card market. I am aware of past instances where MLBP brought legal actions similar to this one against baseball trading card companies such as Pacific and Donruss, and those companies are no longer in business.